Читать книгу Bought For Her Innocence - Tara Pammi - Страница 7
Оглавление“I HAVE A proposition for you, Jasmine, that would allow you to pay off your brother’s debt within a year.”
Fear was a cold fist clamped over her spine, but Jasmine Douglas forced herself to stare steadily into the chilly green eyes of Noah King.
That word proposition from any other man of her acquaintance, while wholly unwelcome but an awful reality of her life, was something she was used to.
The clientele of the club where she worked, owned by Noah, was constantly under the impression that her scantily clad, gyrating-around-a-pole body was up for sale. That she was for sale.
She wasn’t and never would be.
Only soul-wrenching fear of the consequences of owing a debt to this man who owned three underground gambling clubs in London, and who was even now contemplating her future without blinking, had forced her into it.
She had barely buried her brother Andrew when she had learned of the debt he had piled up with Noah King, of all people. Desperation to resolve this debt and a need for survival forced her every night to take the stage.
So coming from Noah, that dangerous word turned the very blood in her veins into ice. “I’ve not missed a single payment, Noah,” she finally said through a dry mouth.
“Yes, but you’re barely making a dent. You have no assets that you could sell off, either.”
Her skin turned cold in the comfortably warm warehouse that was the headquarters of Noah’s empire. A couple of completely harmless-looking men had showed up at her flat this morning and very politely accompanied her to see Noah here.
Sweat pooling over her neck, Jasmine realized how foolish she was to assume that anything related to Noah King was harmless.
“Am I a prisoner, then?” she said, before she could hold back the reckless question.
Noah didn’t even blink as he casually peeled an orange and offered her some. “Until we find a satisfactory resolution, yes.”
Her gut dropped and she fought the instinct to turn around and run. No phrase had ever scared the daylights out of her like satisfactory resolution.
Why, oh, why hadn’t Andrew thought of where his debt would lead him one day? How could he have left her to deal with this dangerous man?
How, after all the promises he had made to her, could he have left her even worse than they had already been?
She had slaved for five years and was still stuck in this man’s power, like a fly stuck in a spider’s web. The more she tried to get out, the more she was ensnared.
On the heels of that thought came instant guilt. Andrew’s face flashed in front of her, his eagerness shining in his eyes, his expression so kind, lodging a lump in her throat.
We’ll get out of this dump one day, Jas. You just wait and watch. I’ll get us out of here.
Her brother had only wanted what was best for her, had only wanted to improve their lot in life. Had watched out for her for years.
Equipped with no skills, saddled with their mother’s drinking and responsibility for Jas, he had seen no other way out of the hellhole they had been born into except by trying his luck in Noah’s gambling den.
Not his fault that he had died so suddenly at only twenty-nine in an accident. Not his fault that everyone they had counted on had disappointed them.
And just like that, as though he was a thorn forever lodged under her skin, like a memory that had been burned into her brain, Dmitri came to mind.
Dmitri Karegas—godson of Giannis Katrakis, textile tycoon and internationally renowned playboy, collector of expensive toys like yachts and Bugattis and...beautiful women.
Dmitri, who had grown up along with them on the streets of London after his English father’s business went into bankruptcy, whom Andrew had shielded from his alcoholic father numerous times, Dmitri, whom Andrew had treated like a brother, Dmitri, to whom Andrew had gone in need and who had refused to help an old friend while he led a filthy rich life, who had looked at her so coldly at Andrew’s funeral and offered her cash.
Dmitri, whose exploits she followed with something bordering on obsession.
Thinking of Andrew would only weaken her; thinking of the man who might have helped was definitely a certain waste of her energies now.
It was as if there was glass in her throat as she looked back at Noah. “How much do I owe?”
“Thirty thousand pounds. It would take you another decade to pay it off if you continue as you do. But if you added a little something more personal to your menu at the club, then I see this going somewhere. You’re a huge hit, Jasmine, and I’ve been getting offer after offer...”
Noah’s words came as if from a distance, as if it was happening to some other person, as if it was the only way her mind could deal with it... Sweat gathered over her forehead and the back of her neck, the pungent odor of alcohol and sweaty bodies that clung to the walls of the warehouse cutting off her breath.
The only thing that did burn into her mind was that she would be one step closer to selling herself, if not all the way. That was what Noah had decided for her. If she didn’t get out now, she never would.
But how? Her lungs burned with the effort to draw breath; her knees locked in utter fear.
“...unless someone offers to buy out your debt, you have no choice.” Noah’s words floated into her mind again.
That was it. That was all she needed—someone to pay off her debt, to buy her from Noah.
And that someone had to be Dmitri.
No, that ashamed part of her screamed. If she went to him for help, he would know how low she had fallen. He would...
Better to sell herself to a known devil than an unknown one, the rational part of her asserted.
But even Dmitri couldn’t just extract her from Noah King with all the power he had amassed. Not after he had turned his back on this life and everything in it.
Not if he had become a soft man who spent his days lounging about on his yacht and nights with women who did his every bidding.
Jasmine would have to provide Dmitri an opening and pray that he would take the bait. And if he didn’t, the consequences didn’t bear thinking about.
The article she had seen in the tech magazine that had been wrapped around the loaf of warm bread she had bought at the bakery only last week came to her. She had nothing to lose at this point and still, everything to gain.
“Put my virginity up for an auction,” she said loudly, the words burning her lips. “Give me a chance to pay it off at once.”
A deafening silence filled the hall. Jasmine could feel ten sets of eyes on her, her skin crawling at the obviously male interest in her. Steadily, she held Noah’s gaze, immensely grateful that at least his gaze was free of the openly nauseating lust she usually found herself the target of.
But then, Noah was, first and always, a businessman.
His silent appraisal of her gave Jasmine hope. Her breath ballooned up in her chest, crushing her lungs as she waited for his reply.
“You think someone will buy you,” he finally said, a greedy glint in his eye. She had caught his interest, she realized, a shaky relief filling her inside out.
“Yes,” she said, putting all her confidence in that single word. “Give me a week, Noah, please,” she added, desperation coating her throat.
“Three days,” Noah finally said.
A shake of his head had one of his thugs accompanying Jasmine to the room she had been brought to earlier.
For a second, Jasmine shook violently from head to toe, utter fear drenching her.
No, she couldn’t lose her nerve now.
Switching her prepaid cell phone on, Jasmine clicked the number she had memorized years ago on the clunky keys, every breath coming like a chore. It had been years; he wouldn’t probably have the same number anymore.
Even if he did have it, he might not care.
Pressing the cold phone to her forehead, Jasmine held back the hot sting of tears.
This had to work.
She backspaced a few times as her fingers shook on the phone screen. Her stomach tight, her hands clammy, she hit Send and crumpled against the floor.
* * *
In the process of putting his discarded shirt on, Dmitri Karegas flicked a glance toward the blonde provocatively stretched over his bed.
“Come back to bed,” she whispered without any fabricated coyness.
What was her name? Mandy? Maddie?
For the life of him, Dmitri couldn’t remember such a simple thing. And couldn’t manage any shame over it, either.
Work, party, sex—these were the parameters of his life. He didn’t hate women, didn’t remember deciding to make his life so. But there it was.
He had worked around the clock for the past two months, trying to undo the damage his business partner and oldest friend, Stavros, had wreaked on Katrakis Textiles’ stock with his uncharacteristic behavior, and finalizing a coup that had finally landed a nightclub he had been dying to acquire on his portfolio.
So he had found the blonde at the nightclub on his first night looking over his new toy.
She was everything he liked in a woman—willing, wanton, with a wicked tongue to boot. Even better, she didn’t fill the silence with inane chatter and hadn’t even dropped those usual hints about a budding relationship.
One creamy thigh bared as she slid upward in the bed. Yet as her rose-colored nipples puckered into tight buds under his continued stare, all he felt was an echo of arousal, the way a dog would lift its muzzle at the scent of meat.
Nothing else. Just like the numerous times over the past decade.
He worked, he collected his toys, he slept with willing women, yet somehow Dmitri never felt anything but a surface reaction, as if he was skimming through the very edge of life, incapable of sinking beneath the surface, forever on the outsides of it.
As if what he had turned off all those years ago to live through another day could never be turned on again. Even when he had helped Anya, who had become a sort of a friend, it had been a shallow echo of a different reality, another life where he had saved his mother that night.
Laughter, gravelly and as shocking as if a mountain rose in the midst of the sea, reached his ears, cutting off his unnerving reverie.
It was the afternoon that Leah had invited Stavros and herself to lunch aboard his yacht.
Looking around, he found his jeans and pulled them on.
He had always liked his godfather’s granddaughter. But ever since Leah and Stavros had found their way to each other, which he had been damn glad about because all the drama around their marriage had caused the Katrakis Textiles’ stock to sink, he had begun finding it distinctly uneasy to be in their company.
He knew what the source of that unease was but he was damned if he gave it voice. Neither did he feel up to the disapproving glance that would come from Stavros.
Even though he was only older by three years, Stavros treated him as if Dmitri was still the sixteen-year-old thug that their godfather Giannis had brought to his estate.
“Leave as soon as you can,” he told the woman without meeting her gaze.
As soon as he stepped on the upper deck, Leah pulled away from Stavros and gave him a loose hug. “It’s good to see you, Dmitri.”
The familiar warmth of her slender body chased a sudden shiver through him, as shocking as if a cavern of emotion had opened up amongst the emptiness. Something must have flickered in his face because Stavros studied him closely.
Ever since Stavros had accepted that he was in love with Leah, after years of scorning Dmitri for what he called his reckless, hedonistic lifestyle, Stavros knew how empty Dmitri felt inside.
“I liked you better before,” he said roughly, warning Stavros away.
Leah looked between them, frowning. “What?”
“Nothing,” Stavros delivered in a flat tone. The knot of his gut relented a little and Dmitri breathed easy, slipping into the mode of that reckless playboy that was bone-deep now.
He pulled a chair for Leah and signaled to his staff to serve lunch. Pulling on a practiced smile, he looked at Leah. “So what has prompted you two to emerge from your love nest a week before the wedding?”
Leah sighed. “I would like for you to give me away at the wedding. Giannis is not here and you mean a lot to me, Dmitri.”
“How many more times do I have to give you away?” he teased while intensely glad that she had asked him.
Her gaze twinkling, Leah grabbed Stavros’s hand and laced her fingers through his. “Just this one more time.”
After years of shouldering duty and knowing nothing but rules, Stavros had finally found a measure of happiness with Leah.
Holding Stavros’s gaze, because he would die rather than betray anything else that he might be feeling to his friend, Dmitri said, “It will be my pleasure, Leah.”
The sharp chime of his cell phone drew his attention. Frowning at the strange number, he clicked it.
I need help, Dmitri. Call Noah and find out. Do this for Andrew.
A cold nail raking over his spine, Dmitri stared at the message.
Images and sensations—his father’s drunken rages, his mother’s tired face, his own powerlessness, stinking alleys filled with Dumpsters, fistfights and broken noses, sobbing when Andrew held him hard, and a girl with huge, dark eyes in her oval face...
Jasmine...
Christos, the message is from Jasmine.
His gut clenched so hard that he pushed at the table and stood with a growl, a violence of emotion he hadn’t known in years holding him in its feral grip.
Noah... Noah King... The man who ruled over the lowlifes of London like a king ran his empire... Lending and extortion, bars and nightclubs, pimps and prostitution, there was no pie that Noah didn’t have a finger in.
And Jasmine was caught in it.
A soft hand on his arm brought him back from the pounding fury... He turned to see Leah staring at him with such shock that his breath burst into him in a wild rush.
On his other side stood Stavros, his gaze filled with concern. “Dmitri, who was that text from?”
“Jasmine.” Even saying her name sent a pulse of something through Dmitri. As if he was opening a door he had closed on the worst night of his life. As if he was suddenly a spiraling vortex of emotion instead of empty inside.
“Jasmine, as in Andrew’s sister?” Stavros’s understanding was instant.
“Yes, she is in trouble,” he replied, running his hand through his hair.
His muscles pumped with the need for action; he wanted to smash something, he...
“Dmitri, let’s discuss what needs to be done,” Stavros interjected calmly, as if aware of how raw he felt. Of course, his friend knew.
He opened the message and read it again. He had thought Jasmine better off without his interest and instead, she had been right there in that veritable hell all these years.
How? How was Jasmine in trouble with Noah King? What had Andrew done?
Instructing Stavros to wait, he made a series of calls, pulling every contact he had made during his life on the streets of London.
In twenty minutes, he had the gist of the situation, and it sent his sanity reeling.
Noah King had set Jasmine’s virginity up for an auction and she was texting for help.
If he hadn’t spent the first fifteen years of his life in that pit, he wouldn’t have believed it. The thing that burned him, though, was that she didn’t ask for help. Not even now.
Instead, she’d reminded him that he owed Andrew for the countless times he had saved Dmitri from his alcoholic father’s rages and then from any number of fistfights that could have killed him.
Did she think he wouldn’t come unless it was to pay off a debt?
Shoving away the infernal questions, he turned to Stavros. “I...need as much cash as we can drum up instantly, upward of a hundred thousand pounds at least.”
Stavros didn’t even hesitate before he called their accountant. “Anything else?” he asked after he had finished.
“You’re the only one I trust. If this goes sideways, I want you to...take care of Jasmine.”
Stavros didn’t even try to stop him, only nodded. He had taught Dmitri what it meant to do his duty.
Maybe this was his chance to start afresh. Maybe he would have his own freedom from the guilt and emptiness that had plagued him for more than a decade once he’d set Jasmine free.
* * *
Jasmine was startled awake from a fitful sleep by the soft creaking of the door. Adrenaline deluged her and she choked down on the scream building in her chest. Slowly, she reached for the knife and sat up toward the edge of the bed. She wasn’t going to leave her safety to chance.
Thankfully, the bed was in the darkest part of the room.
Noah, for all the ruthless chill in his eyes, wouldn’t lay a finger on her. But John, his younger brother... She had seen that lust in his eyes every time she had run into him at the club.
She would have only one chance at striking out and she intended to take it without fail. She didn’t wonder if there was a chance to escape or if Noah would rip into her for attacking his brother.
All she cared in that moment was that no one pinned her on that bed, that no one touched her.
Footsteps that were as light as her own treaded the cheap linoleum floor and she waited, crouching.
The moment the faint shadow moved, she attacked soundlessly. Her knife sliced through the air and scratched at something before she was plucked off the bed as if she was a feather.
She lashed out with her fists and legs, her screams choked by a rough hand that found her mouth effortlessly.
Her struggle lasted all of two seconds. She was grabbed and hauled against a hard body, knocking the breath out of her while a viselike arm clamped around her middle.
“Stop struggling or I will walk out and not look back.”
Mindless with fear, Jasmine dug her teeth into the hard palm, squeezing and pushing against the steel cage that clamped her.
The hold against her waist tightened, long fingers pressing into her belly and almost grazing the underside of her breasts.
But John’s body wasn’t honed to steel like the one holding her was, the thought pulsed through the fear. John was fleshy, round. John was... The body that held her tight was all hard muscles and sharp angles, the scent that filled her nostrils not of sweat and other body fluids but clean with a touch of water to it.
Like the ocean breeze. And only one man she knew had that intoxicating scent that had muddled her senses the last time, too.
She had been drowning in grief at Andrew’s funeral, and the sight of him, all stunning and sophisticated and so different, that crisp scent of him as he had neared her had sent her on a tailspin.
“Dmitri?” she whispered, every hope, every breath hinged in that name, her pulse fluttering so fast that it whooshed in her ears.
The tightness of his hold relented, a sudden shift in the hardness that encased her. His breath landed on the rim of her ear, tickling her. “At your service, Jasmine.”
Relief came at her in shuddering waves, her lungs expanding, her throat thick with pent-up fear.
Long fingers moved up and down her arms, stroking her. “Breathe, pethi mou.”
A streak of longing rent through her at the endearment, tearing at the hardened chunk of self-imposed loneliness that was her core. God, she hadn’t been held like that in forever.
“You came,” she whispered, feeling light-headed and shivery.
“Your faith in me will bloat my ego.” Silky smooth and dripping with sarcasm, his words were a whiplash against her fading willpower.
Anchoring her fingers on his forearms, she forced her spine to straighten. “From everything I hear about you,” she said, her relief fading with a welcome burn of anger and grief she had nursed for the past few years, “your ego, among other things, is apparently already big enough.”
Waves of his laughter enveloped her. His mouth opened in a smile against her jaw, sending a burst of such shocking heat through her nerves. She didn’t dare turn and glance at him, for fear of combusting alive on the spot.
Why was she reacting like this to him? Was it shock?
“John’s lying outside—”
She tried to jerk away from him. “God, you killed him?”
Another lethal smile flashed at her. “I promised my godfather I wouldn’t waste the life he gave me.”
“Nice to know you keep some of your promises.”
“And then there is Stavros,” he continued smoothly, ignoring her ungrateful little remark, “whose wedding is in a week, and he would not appreciate being dragged into my mess.” He sighed. “So tempted as I was, I didn’t kill him. I don’t even use my fists anymore except to hit Stavros,” he added. “And believe me, if that isn’t exercising self-control, I don’t know what is.”
Jasmine had no idea if he was serious or joking. The fact that he had answered her request for help, even though it was what she had fervently prayed for, hit her hard now.
Was it because she hadn’t expected the infamous playboy to come himself? Because she had relentlessly, and a little obsessively, hoped that the soft lifestyle had softened him?
Had somehow made him less?
Instead, the body that encased her felt as if it was made of steel. Realizing that she was leaning into him, she threw her elbow out.
His breath hissed out of him. “Now that we have finished our introductions, are you ready to leave this dump?”
“Dmitri...why did you attack John? Why’re you here in the middle of the night?”
Darkness shadowed his face, the fluorescent light caressing his face here and there. The light gray of his eyes was the only thing she could see. And in one glimpse, they burned with such ferocity that Jasmine dropped her gaze. “I hit him because I remembered how much of a bully John was and because he was sniffing around outside your door. And I’m here at midnight because I don’t trust Noah not to up the ante by morning—”
One question burned on her lips. “Did you...pay off the debt, Dmitri?”
“I didn’t just pay off the debt, Jasmine. I won the—” he slipped into Greek and Jasmine had no interest in learning what the pithy word was “—auction. Now stop acting the damsel in distress and move, thee mou.”
The endearment, echoing with mockery, lanced at her. “I’m not a damsel, neither am I naive enough to assume that you’re a white knight.”
The second her words left her, she wanted to snatch them back.
His teeth gleamed in the dark. “It heartens me to know that you know the score. I’m no white knight, neither will I risk loss of limb to save your hide.”
“No?”
“No. But you already know that. What did you call me at Andrew’s funeral—a self-serving bastard who doesn’t know the meaning of honor or loyalty? Throwing some money at Noah to buy you is one thing. But my generosity doesn’t stretch far enough to risk myself. So how about we postpone our chat?”
The dark of dawn cloaked them as they exited into the street. A gasp left her as she saw the sleek Bugatti motorcycle tucked neatly out of sight.
So what the dirty rags reported about his lifestyle was true. Bugatti bikes, and a yacht and countless women—Dmitri Karegas finally had everything he had ever wanted.
And he hadn’t lifted even a finger to help Andrew.
I have asked Dmitri for help and he cut me off, Jas. He’s not the boy we knew once. Andrew’s words resonated in her head, building a fire of hatred in her gut. But he had helped her today, the sensible part of her piped up.
“You’re staring at it as if it were a viper that would strike you.”
Feeling the intensity of his perusal, she shook her head.
It didn’t matter what Dmitri had become. It couldn’t matter to her.
He was an old friend who happened to have enough money to bail her out of a sticky situation. She would pay him back, even if it meant she would have to go hungry half the time, and they would be through with each other and that would be that.
“Jasmine?” Dmitri probed softly.
Cold October wind pressed against the exposed skin at her neck, sinking and seeping into her flesh. The worn-out sweatshirt she had pulled on last night offered meager protection. Her muscles shivered at the biting cold.
He chucked off his leather jacket. And held it out to her.
Her hands wrapped around herself to ward off the cold, she stared back at him.
“I don’t need it...” Her teeth chattered right in the middle of her sentence. Bloody traitorous body! “I’m fine,” she finished lamely.
He said nothing, his hand still stretched out toward her.
The silence between them stretched, sharply contrasted by the growing traffic around them. He pushed the helmet down onto his head. Though his face was hidden by the visor, Jasmine could feel the thread of his fury beneath it.
His very stillness in the wake of it was disconcerting and she marveled at his control.
Why? Why was he so angry with her? Why couldn’t he take the damn helmet off so that she could properly look at him, so that she could at least guess his thoughts?
She must still be under shock after the past few days because somehow the latter mattered more to her than his anger.
She wanted to see those solemn gray eyes; she wanted to see that broken blade of his nose, the tender smile that had always curved his mouth just for her. The strength of how fiercely she wanted to feel those arms around her once again... It was insanity.
More than anything, she wanted to see how much he’d changed from the sixteen-year-old who had left with his wealthy godfather.
From as far back as she could remember, Dmitri had been rough, almost violent, got into every fight he could manage. Only Andrew had been able to calm him, reach him at a level that no one could.
His mother’s death did that to him was all her brother would say when she probed. She remembered how fiercely Dmitri had fought against leaving with his godfather. It had taken Andrew countless hours to convince him.
But once he’d left, Dmitri hadn’t looked back. Not once.
He had easily forsaken Andrew and all the promises he’d made, had become the überwealthy playboy who cared nothing for those he had left behind.
And then he’d started appearing in the gossip columns, his wild parties, expensive toys and the countless women he dated—dated being a euphemism—making him infamous. One time, he had even come close to marrying a Russian supermodel.
In short, his life now was spheres away from hers.
“Before you read something into this—” she sensed his sardonic smile rather than seeing it “—it’s like putting a tarp on my Ferrari or a fresh coat of paint on my yacht, Jasmine. It’s about protecting my possessions.”
A gasp escaped her at how effortlessly cruel he was. “I still don’t want it.”
“Fine, freeze to your death, then.”
He pushed the helmet over her head. With precise movements, he tugged the ends of the strap together tight around her chin. Jasmine jerked at the touch of his long fingers against her jaw and cheeks, a searing heat stroking her skin. The click of the strap reverberated in tune with the thud of her heart.
“I don’t need—”
“I’m very possessive of all my toys.”
She slapped his hand away from her chin, her rising temper drowning out the confusion. With movements as measured as she could make them, she got on the bike.
“I’m not a bloody toy that you acquired. You’re just as bad as the lot of them.”
Her words got cut off as the bike started with a sleek purr, pulled off like a cannon and the momentum almost threw her off the backseat.
The very real risk of flying off the bike claiming her, Jasmine held on to his shoulders, taking care to not touch him more than necessary.
A distinct sense of unease settled between her shoulder blades. What had she risked by trusting a man who had no loyalty, who thought his roots were nothing but a dirty stain that had to be removed?
